About writing. And reading. And being published. Or not published. On working on being published. Tangents into the pop culture world to come. Especially about movies. And comic books. And movies from comic books.

Monday, January 12, 2015

"Is this a good place to stand?" (a Battle of Five Armies review)

It is not an illegitimate question to ask me why I saw this movie. I've not hid how much I disliked... no, loathed... the other two movies in this godforsaken trilogy that erupted from Peter Jackson's bowels (more on that in a moment), so why would I bother with this one? The answer is actually very simple: I don't earn the right to speak disparagingly about it without having seen it. It's much easier to give examples of why you don't like (hate) something than it is to defend your reasons for why you think you won't like something. There's no good response to, "But you haven't tried it."

As a related example:
My oldest son (both of my boys) detests the Hobbit movies. Not in his exact words, but he described it like this: Imagine the most beautiful bathroom in the world. Gorgeous. Marble and gold and perfumed. And it has a heated golden throne of a toilet. But, when you sit down to take a dump, it is still just a dump, and, specifically, The Battle of Five Armies is a slow motion movie of Peter Jackson on that beautiful, golden toilet in that gilded bathroom, taking a long, excruciating dump.

But he has this friend who is always attacking his position that, compared to the book, the movies are horrible. She loves the movies and thinks they are better than the book. The problem? She hasn't read the book. But she believes that since the movies have made so much money and that she likes them that that is proof enough that the book must really not be that good. And why bother with it, anyway, when she loves the movie so much? [Which goes back to what I said in my review of Desolation about kids not wanting to bother with the book because of the movie.] Her opinion, though, is ill informed and without authority.

So I went to see the movie so that I could have the freedom to talk about how stupid it all is.

And, this time, I'm not even going to mention the deviations from the book; I'm just going to talk about the blatant stupid of the movie. Which started immediately, I might add. There was so much stupid, in fact, that I lost count of the stupid before Smaug was even dead. Let's look at the big two:

1. Bard is left locked in prison as the dragon is attacking. Naturally, he's in a ragestorm trying to break his way out. But it's a good, solid prison, and he's having no luck. But he ends up with a rope that he's able to grapple a boat with. A very slow-moving boat because the boat is loaded down with gold and on the verge of sinking. And let me be clear: This is a boat being paddled by just a couple of dudes. Against all odds (and physics (maybe Peter Jackson has never been in a boat that was still tied to a dock)), rather than the boat stopping, the boat rips the wall out of the prison! Without even slowing down!

And just to continue the stupid of that scene, rather than go out the hole in the wall, Bard suddenly is able to punch a whole in the ceiling and go out that way instead.

2. During the battle, Bard's bow gets broken in half. How is he supposed to shoot the dragon out of the sky with a broken bow? Answer: Jam the two halves of the bow into a crumbling structure (because the dragon smashed it and set it on fire) and proceed to pull the string back as if nothing happened. Oh, except, now, the string is like three times as long and he uses his son to steady the arrow. Which leads me to believe that Jackson has probably never even touched a bow, because what Bard does is the equivalent of trying to shoot down an airplane (that's crawling at you) with one of those toy bows with the suction cup arrows. And, yes, I'm saying this as someone who was at one time into archery and has experience with bows.

The worst part about the movie, though, is that I couldn't wait for Thorin to die. I wanted him to just get it over with. Between all the slow motion talking and the drug hallucinations, I was just through with him. Jackson managed to undermine the entire point of The Hobbit through what he did with Thorin and the Arkenstone. There was no power in Thorin's apology to Bilbo, because there was no understanding on the part of Thorin, just recovery.

Oh, and to go back to mere stupid: Azog blasting through the ice as if he was rocket-powered. Seriously, someone send Peter Jackson back to school so that he can learn things like physics. And to teach him some appreciation of literature. Jackson's Hobbit is the worst piece if fan fiction filth I've ever seen or heard about.
And, yes, that's how I really feel.

I've neither liked nor disliked the Hobbit movies as a whole (after all, I barely remember the original Hobbit story and like Alex, I just shut off my brain and watched) but I do have to admit I didn't really like this one. It's like they took everything they could from a bad action movie and turned it into a fantasy movie.

The very moment Bard punches through the roof and escapes, my wife threw her hands up in the air and went, "Seriously, you can just punch out the roof now?"

The ice scene you mentioned bugged me too. Everyone thinks Azog is dead... because, you know, this brutish orc decides he's going to just 'act' dead and float away peacefully. Then, like a bad 80s horror flick, he bursts back to life and goes for the kill.

Oh, and don't forget Legolas, who wasn't even in the book, stepping on falling blocks and practically walking to safety as an entire castle is crumbling all around him.

That stuff is fine when you're watching a brainless action movie, but I expected better from something like The Hobbit.

Sigh... This whole production has been a travesty... and while I'm not surprised to hear your review of it (as I'm pretty sure I will feel exactly the same way when I inevitably watch it), I am sad as I always hoped that somehow it will be redeemed.

The book should not have been split up into three movies. "Fan fiction" is a pretty accurate way to describe them. It's poorly researched, disregards the spirit of the original, goes on way too long...yep, that's fan fiction all right.

Oh man, you brought back some bad memories. The worst was the supposedly dead dude under the ice. Everyone, and I mean everyone, had to have known that he was going to suddenly open his eyes and jump up. I laughed, in an uncomfortable and embarrassed sort of manner. Then there's the sled pulled by rabbits. I sat through it because my friend couldn't find anyone to go along. And so I imagine I have earned MANY karma points. At least I keep telling myself so...

Your review didn't provide much encouragement to see a movie that I wasn't overly enthralled about seeing. These kinds of movies are not beginning to bore me, but I have been uninterested for a good while now. Reading analyses such as your are probably more entertaining than the movie anyway, and they take up far less of my time.

Lee: Writing the review was far more entertaining than watching the movie, if that tells you anything. In fact, it was the anticipation of getting to write the review that propelled me to see the movie. That and I can tell people why they shouldn't go see the movie.

"The Evil That Men Do"

Charter Shorts

Followers

Follow by Email

About Me

I got a degree in English with the intent to write. Then, I got busy with other things, including getting married and having kids, and let the whole writing thing get away from me. 20 years later, I'm finally doing it. My first novel is currently available through Amazon on the Kindle and as a physical book.